Piers_Williamson

As a fellow Noble fan, I'm curious as to what you like about the combination with your active basses. I primarily like my Noble with old school fender passive pickups (having listened to Tim Lefevre). I also discovered it works well in combination with a compressor, but I find my Wal and Musicman pretty overpowering in combination. Any advise?

I have a fantastic Noble valve pre-amp which has an equally fantastic valve DI

I really like the way the neck of a Stingray really sits under your hands, almost like I imagine a short-scale would (albeit I don't own a short scale). Much more forgiving to play long sets with.

I'm afraid Alicia Keys song will be forever associated with part of South Wales for me, so I count that as an honorary GB song

If it were me I would have a luthier do the cutting for you. It's not a time consuming or expensive job for someone who knows what they are doing.

Once upon a time I had an active Lakland five string that I thought sounded really 'naselly', other than through an old fashioned valve rig. For better, for worse, I sold it to a fellow basschatter in Spain, who was in raptures about my (ex) bass. Roll the clock on a few years and I was very fortunate to acquire two Wals (at 'player' rather than 'e-bay merchant' prices). I thought both sounded quite 'bassy' 'til I started playing about with the pickup trim pots. Then I discovered that if I cut the bottom end and turned up the pick-attack pot I could make both sound like a Jazz and/or a Musicman. I wondered whether as a (getting deaf) 60 year old one's sense of enjoyment of the sound of a particular bass can be adapted a lot using active basses? (I own three passive Jazz basses as my reference)

There is a band called The XX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_xx Does XXXX plus the XX comply with the Rules? (Not quite but close)

Love Shack B52s

I watched this yesterday, went back to the 'Shadows of Motown' score, and my jaw dropped, particularly with the bridge section. what an astonishing phenomenon Jamerson was, and Julia Hofer is a pretty understated player that covers some great tunes too.

Mouldy Old Dough was apparently the 42 best selling single of the whole of the 1970s in the UK...so there you go!

Does this count as 'novelty', or 'Slade on anti-depressants'?

I do wonder how much it weighs, and are both basses 'on' all the time?

This is the place we use. Fairly near Paddington Station: http://www.westbournerehearsals.com/index.htm Pretty friendly and the gear is ok

So a nerdy question......I use both a (reassuringly expensive) Noble and and a Cali 76 as my signal chain (on a passive vintagy bass), and plug it into what ever solid state power stage is on offer. I also have a Handbox R400, which I just plug straight into, because I assume that the pre-amp stage of the R400 does pretty well the same job as my Noble. What do you think the difference is?

Perhaps the owner practices in a salmon smoke house?

A Player's Capstan bass rather than a Player's bass?

We are going to have to start calling you Reggie Risk now 😬

Technically I swapped my Mark King (for an early Wal) and my 5 string fretless epic is up for sale at the Gallery at the minute. I am a leftie though Jazzy, so they wouldn't have interested you! I did it with a heavy heart though! I still have the t shirts 🙂

Without hijacking a marvelous thread....Jazzy I am now almost an ex-Alembic owner ☹️ Beautiful, beautiful basses....but a bit impractical and too precious for playing gigs where they might get damaged. So a question for you....if you were playing, say, a vintage Jazz or Musicman through your rig, can you recreate some, or all of the same flexibility that Alembics have on-board...through the pre-amp/super filter?

Thanks Jazzy....and for completeness, is the top rack unit a stereo splitter??

Nerdy Alembic question for you Jazzy....if you have all that filtering goodness on-board your Alembic, do you need an SF 2 rack as well, or do you leave one set flat? And what does the top element in your rack do? Thanks...and beautiful basses and tasteful playing from you!

Re Dave Allen and Shriekback, this photo is from exactly the period of 'My Spine is the Bass Line'. When Dave was in the Gang of Four, he had his basses made by the same luthier in Leeds as me (I was a leftie so had no choice whatsoever at that time). However, by the time he was in Shriekback, he was playing whatever G&L this on is:

I love the fact Gibson didn't make left-handed truss rod covers. I bet all the controls work the wrong way (only Lefties would notice this sort of thing 🙂)

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/125213627688?hash=item1d27505528:g:5VMAAOSwBD5iN6J6 Has this had its neck/headstock replaced. or is it a fake?